The Exodus

by Richard Elliott Friedman

  19. Eric Cline, From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2012), p. 90.

  20. E.g., G. E. Mendenhall, “The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26,” Journal of Biblical Literature 77 (1958): 52–66.

  21. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, comment on Numbers 3:43, p. 432. There are no cases at all in the Torah in which ’eleph means “clan.” Baruch Halpern finds two cases elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible where the term means “clan”: Judges 6:15 and 1 Samuel 10:19–21, but he too shows that this term cannot be applied to the lists in Numbers arithmetically. Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), pp. 114–16.

  22. Mark Harris, “The Thera Theories: Science and the Modern Reception History of the Exodus,” in IETP, p. 97.

  23. The same applies to other attempts to propose possible natural explanations for the Red Sea episode. Such an attempt to explain it in terms of winds appears in Doron Nof and Nathan Paldor, “Are There Oceanographic Explanations for the Israelites’ Crossing of the Red Sea?” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 73 (1992): 305–14; and see citations there. Much more cautious is the approach of A. Salomon, S. Ward, F. McCoy, J. Hall, and T. Levy, who go so far as to examine only what possible natural occurrences such as tsunamis could have “inspired” the biblical story; “Inspired by a Tsunami? An Earth Sciences Perspective of the Exodus Narrative, IETP, pp. 109–29; and see citations there.

  24. Harris, “The Thera Theories,” p. 91. See recently Sturt W. Manning, A Test of Time and A Test of Time Revisited: The Volcano of Thera and the Chronology and History of the Aegean and East Mediterranean in the Mid-second Millennium BC, 2nd ed. (first edition 1999), (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014), and the review by Manfred Bietak in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2016) online, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2016/2016-04-06.html.

  25. G. Ernest Wright, Biblical Archaeology, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962); The Challenge of Israel’s Faith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944); God Who Acts (London: SCM, 1952); The Old Testament and Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Mystery of Egypt

  1. Baruch Halpern wrote, “Semites always swarmed in the Delta.” IETP, p. 294 (and see the following note). John Collins wrote, “The existence of Semitic slaves in Egypt in the late second millennium is well attested.” Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), p. 111. William Propp wrote, “Multitudes of Asiatics were continually entering Egypt both voluntarily and involuntarily throughout the New Kingdom.” Propp, Exodus 19–40, p. 765. Thomas Römer wrote, “Egyptian texts mention several cases of ‘Asiatics’ (‘3mw) who had successful careers in Egypt, often attaining high office.” Römer, The Invention of God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 52. See, for instance, David Srour et al., IETP, p. 180; and the chapters by Manfred Bietak and James Hoffmeier in IETP. Carol Meyers, Nova interview, posted November 18, 2008; Jeffrey Tigay, “Exodus,” in The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed., A. Berlin and M. Brettler, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 103–4; and Iain Provan, V. P. Long, and T. Longman, in A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003), pp. 125–26.

  2. For example, my colleague the archaeologist Thomas Levy excavated evidence of Shasu migration to Egypt. See T. Levy, R. B. Adams, and A. Muniz, “Archaeology and the Shasu Nomads: Recent Excavations in the Jabal Hamrat Fidan, Jordan,” in R. E. Friedman and W. Propp, eds., Le-David Maskil, A Birthday Tribute for David Noel Freedman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), pp. 63–89. And Halpern notes that “a report that ‘Shasu of Edom’ passed the Wadi Tumeilat (Pap. Anastasi VI 4.11–5.5) or that two slaves escaped past Migdol (Pap. Anastasi V 19.2–20.6; both ANET 259) may be routine police blotter material. Or, the Exodus.” IETP, p. 294. Volkmar Fritz, The Emergence of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries BCE (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), pp. 126–30. Thomas E. Levy, Mohammad Najjar, and Erez Ben-Yosef, New Insights into the Iron Age Archaeology of Edom, Southern Jordan: Surveys, Excavations and Research from the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) (Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2014).

  3. Avraham Faust, “The Emergence of Iron Age Israel,” in IETP, p. 476. One could also add archaeologist Jodi Magness, who wrote of the many scholars who view the early Israelites “who joined with new arrivals (including perhaps a small group from Egypt—hence the story of the Exodus) to form a new group unified by their worship of a patron deity known as YHWH (Yahweh),” in Magness, The Archaeology of the Holy Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 25.

  4. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: “Was a Mass Exodus even possible in the time of Ramesses II?” (p. 58). “The escape of more than a tiny group from Egyptian control . . . seems highly unlikely” (p. 60). “One can hardly accept the idea of a flight of a large group of slaves from Egypt” (p. 61). “The text describes the survival of a great number of people. . . . Some archaeological traces of their generation-long wandering in the Sinai should be apparent” (p. 62).

  5. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, p. 52.

  6. Lee Levine, “Biblical Archaeology,” in David Lieber and Jules Harlow, eds., Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, Jewish Publication Society, 2001), p. 1341.

  7. David Wolpe, “Did the Exodus Really Happen?” http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2004/12/Did-The-Exodus-Really-Happen.aspx.

  8. James Hoffmeier in IETP, p. 205. Hoffmeier noted that in answer to the question “Do you think the early Israelites lived in Egypt and that there was some sort of Exodus? Nineteen answered YES. None said NO.” (The other six expressed various forms of uncertainty.)

  9. WWTB, pp. 82–83.

  10. Exodus 2:1–10; Numbers 26:59.

  11. Baruch Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (Chico, CA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1983), p. 250.

  12. On Merari and Mushi, see William Propp, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 276. On Moses, Hophni, and Phinehas, see Donald Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 417–19. On Hur, see Ernst Axel Knauf, “Hur,” ABD, vol. 3, p. 334. The name Miriam may also be Egyptian; see Propp, Exodus 1–18, p. 546.

  13. The name Hur, connected with the Egyptian god Horus, never occurs among any of the ten tribes of Israel. Outside of its occurrence among the Levites (Exodus 17:10, 12; 24:14) it occurs only in Judah (Exodus 31:2). At the time that the Levites would have arrived in the region, Judah (with Simeon) was a separate entity from Israel.

  14. The Egyptian names occur in the sources and editors J; E; P; Dtr; R; Joshua 24; Samuel (A and B); Isaiah; Jeremiah; Micah; Malachi; Psalms 77; 90; 99; 103; 105; 106; Daniel; Chronicles; and Ezra/Nehemiah.

  15. Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997).

  16. Their case was further supported in Cross’s Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 112–44; in Freedman’s, “Early Israelite Poetry and Historical Reconstructions,” in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980), pp. 167–78; and in Baruch Halpern’s The First Historians (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). See also Ronald Hendel, “The Exodus as Cultural Memory: Egyptian Bondage and the Song of the Sea,” in IETP, p. 71. On the other side, Konrad Schmid of the University of Zurich says in “Distinguishing the World of the Exodus Narrative from the World of Its Narrators: The Question of the Priestly Exodus Account in Its Historical Setting,” IETP, p. 333, that viewing the song as a very ancient piece of literature “is probably untenable, given the links in Exodus 15 to the preceding narrative in Exodus 14 (including its Priestly portions).” But the links to those narratives are precisely that the narratives have the song as their source, not the other way around. Halpern’s
demonstration that the narratives depend on the song, which Schmid does not cite, disproves that claim, as does the original work of Cross and Freedman showing the antiquity of the language of the song, further reinforced in Brian D. Russell, The Song of the Sea: The Date of Composition and Influence of Exodus 15:1–21, Studies in Biblical Literature, vol. 101 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

  17. Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, p. x.

  18. The Song of the Sea is used by the author of J. The Song of Deborah is used by the author of Judges 1–4; 6–8. These are discussed in Halpern, The First Historians (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 76–97; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 112–44.

  19. R. E. Friedman and Shawna Dolansky, The Bible Now (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 68–72.

  20. Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophets, p. 146. Some readers mistakenly think that the word Israel appears in the song in the first line, which says, “Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song” (Exodus 15:1). But that line (which is prose, not poetry) is visibly the prose introduction to the song, not part of the song itself. It is as if someone would say, “And then Frank Sinatra sang, ‘My kind of town, Chicago is . . .’” and someone thought that the words “And then Frank Sinatra sang” were part of the song.

  21. In King Solomon’s Temple dedication speech (1 Kings 8:13; 2 Chronicles 6:2).

  22. In Exodus 25:8; Leviticus 12:4 plus five more occurrences; Numbers 3:38; 10:21; 18:1; 19:20; Joshua 24:26; Isaiah 63:18; Jeremiah 17:12; Ezekiel 5:11 plus twenty-two more occurrences; Amos 7:13; Psalms 74:7; 78:69; 96:6; Lamentations 1:10; 2:7, 20; Nehemiah 10:40; 1 Chronicles 22:19; 28:10; 2 Chronicles 20:8; 26:18; 29:21; 30:8; 36:17.

  23. Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, p. 136 and notes; Baruch Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan, p. 33n.; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 142.

  24. Ephraim, Benjamin, Machir (=Manassesh?), Zebulun, Issachar, Reuben, Gilead (=Gad?), Dan, Asher, Naphtali. It does not include Judah or Simeon, which were in the south and were a separate geographic and political entity from Israel.

  25. So Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan, pp. 120–21.

  26. Freedman, Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy, p. 175.

  27. Reported in WWTB, The Bible with Sources Revealed, The Hidden Book in the Bible, and The Exile and Biblical Narrative. See the bibliographies in these for works by other scholars. As noted above, the bibliography on this subject is now so extensive that no one work can list it all.

  28. The Tel Dan Inscription and the Mesha Stele. See Chapter 3.

  29. 2 Kings 18 and 19; Isaiah 36 and 37. Text from Sennacherib in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), hereafter ANET, p. 288. See also G. E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), pp. 167–74; Victor H. Matthews and Don C. Benjamin, eds., Old Testament Parallels (New York: Paulist Press, 2006), pp. 190–92; Friedman, WWTB, pp. 93–95.

  30. See, for example, the website TheTorah.com; also see such works by orthodox scholars as Louis Jacobs, We Have Reason to Believe (Elstree, UK: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004); Shalom Carmy, ed., Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah, The Orthodox Forum Series (New York: Jason Aronson, 1996); Marc Brettler, How to Read the Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005); James Kugel, How to Read the Bible (New York: Free Press, 2007).

  31. The Swiss scholar Konrad Schmid summarized these divergences in current Pentateuchal scholarship in “Distinguishing the World of the Exodus Narrative from the World of Its Narrators: The Question of the Priestly Exodus Account in Its Historical Setting,” IETP, pp. 331–33. Carol Meyers at Duke University confirms that “the documentary hypothesis may no longer dominate biblical studies, but recent overviews show that little consensus has emerged about the formation of the Pentateuch,” in Meyers, Exodus, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 17.

  32. I have diagnosed this strange condition of my field as a failure of method. But recently a colleague told me that he thinks it is rather a failure of memory. And I think that he is right. People keep coming up with new models and new variations on the old model. That is fine. But they do not pay sufficient respect to the evidence and arguments of the models that they are casting off. The documentary hypothesis once held (and maybe still holds) the agreement of the majority of scholars. But that is not what made it right. We do not determine truth by a majority vote. The hypothesis held us because its evidence was (and is) strong. None of the new alternatives has replaced it, not only because they have not won over a majority of the field, but because they remain insufficiently defended and because they have not dealt with the evidence that made the documentary hypothesis the standard for a century.

  33. They were not (could not have been) composed by one author. (1) They are written in the Hebrew of several different periods, more widespread than the distance from Shakespeare’s English to mine. (2) They can be separated into sections that each use distinct terminology: words that the other sections rarely or never use. There are some five hundred of these unique occurrences of words. (3) The sections with the different terminology also each consistently have their own particular depictions of the revelation of the name Yahweh, of the role of priests and of Levites, and of various sacred objects such as the ark, the Tabernacle, and the cherubs. (4) There are stories that are told twice, called doublets. (5) There are texts that contradict each other on events, on numbers, and on names of persons and places. (6) When we separate the texts according to their distinct terminology, the doublets and contradictions “disappear.” That is, they comfortably and consistently fit into one section or another. (7) When we separate the texts along the lines of all these consistent points of evidence, the sections each flow naturally. That is: if one section interrupts another, then the next time that we find the one that was interrupted, it picks up naturally where it left off before the intrusion. (8) Each of these continuous, consistently worded, consistently depicted, noncontradicting, nonrepeated texts, which relate to the specific periods of Hebrew in which they are respectively written, also have unique connections to other parts of the Bible. One of them has over seventy-five connections with the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Another has about as many with the book of the prophet Ezekiel. Another of the texts is disproportionately connected with a group of sections of the Bible’s history of Israel’s monarchy in later books. It has over a hundred occurrences of words that occur only in this section of the Torah and in those history texts. (9) We can trace each of these sections to particular times and events in Israel’s history. We can see how those particular times and events influenced the respective authors to tell the story as they did.

  The most important point of all is that these many types of different evidence converge. When we separate the texts from one another, the doublets all resolve, the contradictions turn out to be in distinct texts, the terms do not slip into other sections, the texts each flow continuously, and they fit their respective histories and their respective periods of Hebrew.

  34. Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed.

  35. Antony Campbell and Mark O’Brien, Sources of the Pentateuch: Texts, Introductions, Annotations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1993); J. E. Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby, The Hexateuch (London: Longmans, Greens, 1902).

  36. The online Hebrew text is the Westminster Leningrad Codex, at http://tanach.us/Tanach.xml.

  37. WWTB, pp. 54–59.

  38. The very obvious Levite connections of E, P, and D but not J are treated in most introductions to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My treatment is in WWTB.

  39. Called variously Mushite, Aaronid, Shilonite, Zadokite, and others. See F. M. Cross, “The Priestly Houses of Early Israel,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 195–215.

  40. WWTB, pp. 85–86; The Hidden Book in the Bible, pp. 51–52.

  41. Genesis 4:1. The Gre
ek text has Theou here, which translates Hebrew Elohim rather than Yahweh. So if the Greek text is original, and the woman does not say the name Yahweh here, then the first person to say the name Yahweh in J is Lamech. See Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, p. 40.

  42. Scholars sometimes refer to “the names of God” imprecisely when we first introduce people to the history of the subject. I admit that I did this myself in Who Wrote the Bible? In my later work, The Bible with Sources Revealed, I took care to emphasize that it is more accurate to speak of the question of when the divine name was revealed, not a question of different divine names.

  A second mistake that people commonly make is that they imagine that we just circularly call any verse with the name Yahweh in it J and any verse with El or Elohim in it E or P, and then we claim, “See: it’s consistent.” But that is not how it works at all. The passages in which the words Yahweh, El, and Elohim occur have to come out consistent with all of the other evidence for identifying passages as J or E or P, namely: the unbroken continuity of narrative texts (you can separate them and read a continuous story in each, with few gaps); the consistent use of the five hundred other characteristic terms in each text; the division of twice-told stories (doublets) with the terms Yahweh or Elohim appearing consistently in one or the other of the two stories; the links between the stories in each source with the era in history that each reflects; the connections between the respective sources with other parts of the Bible (for example, J with the Court History of David in 2 Samuel, and P with the prophet Ezekiel); and the multiple connections of the source J to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and the source E to the Northern Kingdom of Israel—which were two separate countries for two hundred years. No scholar is clever enough to make all of that work consistently and still have the name of God always in the right place.